Pages

Sunday, 15 January 2017

That's right, I will be attending this year's Golf Industry Show in Orlando Florida and will be doing a number of talks. I hope to meet up and talk with everyone I have met over the years on social media and am really looking forward to this event.

I will be involved with 4 presentations during the week.

On Monday Feb 6th at 3:30pm I will be taking part in the environmental panel discussion where we will discuss;

SUCCESSFUL LOW-INPUT TURF MANAGEMENT: IS IT PRACTICAL?

I am very excited to join Doug Soldat, Matthew Crowther, and Chris Tritabaugh for this discussion. I've already seen their presentations and can say that you won't want to miss this.

On Tuesday, Feb 7th at 9am I will be taking part in the lightning round presentations. These presentations are from a wide variety of people and are only 2 minutes long each! I will be sharing the craziest things I have observed over the years on my golf course. This is sure to be a lot of fun.

On Tuesday, Feb 7th at 1pm I will be co-leading a Seminar with Larry Stowell from Pace Turf

MLSN GUIDELINES AND GROWTH POTENTIAL

SOLD OUT!

I am very excited to be a part of this seminar because the MLSN has changed the way I manage turf over the past 5 years. The really cool thing about this seminar is that it will have one of the MLSN's creators presenting along with my 5 years of practical experience. This seminar promises to give you the best scientific but also practical introduction into the MLSN guidelines and how they can benefit your operation.

Finally, On Wednesday Feb 8th I will be doing a short presentation and demo of digital job board technology on the trade show floor.

This will be my first time to Florida and the GIS and I can't wait to meet everyone there!

The almost part of that statement comes from the fact that I decided to hit up the 3 LDS I had on all my greens with a spot spray of wetting agent which I did. I used the rinsate from an old dispatch jug and sprayed it on these spots.

The only LDS on my greens this past year

Of course the assistant superintendent at the neighboring course, Matt, called me on my use of wetting agents (he bet me that I would have to use them) and won himself a case of beer (that is if I actually make it down there with some). I didn't use Revolution as stated and stopped use of the spot sprayer and wetting agents after Matt reminded me of our deal.

@PenderSuper lol not to mention the case of beer you now owe me for applying wetting agent on greens!!!!! WOOIIIIEEEEE!!!! @secheltsuper

Now it's easy for me to talk about how great I am but I think a lot of my success with no wetting agents this year came from the fact that we had a wet June and August which made keeping the grass hydrated a lot easier than during a prolonged drought. Even so, there was still a pretty good moisture deficit this year.

Slightly below average moisture deficit of 428 mm in 2016

2016 still required regular hand watering. Not on the greens like you might think. We hand watered almost nothing on the greens (maybe 10 hours total all year). We spent most of our efforts hand watering the aprons, approaches and green surrounds which are all areas that receive wetting agents. hmmmm

So in a nutshell, only those areas that received wetting agents, required hand watering.

Giving approaches a quick hand water

I think there were two things happening here. The first is that I didn't need any wetting agents on my greens. The second was that I had to hand water much less during periods where the weather would have normally required a lot of hand watering.

As I hypothesized last year, I think that wetting agents have become redundant on putting greens and other highly maintained areas of the golf course. With regular needle tine aeration, lightweight rolling, and the ability to measure soil moisture I think our ability to manage soil moisture has got to a level where wetting agents might not necessarily be needed under normal growing conditions. In 2016 we were able to roll our greens 218 times and needle tine aerified them 3 times.

Face it, we don't have to guess how much water is in our greens, and can hand water areas that are drying out before they show signs of moisture stress and become hydrophobic. It has become relatively easy even for small golf course managers such as myself to have almost total control of moisture on our greens. On a larger scale it is still quite difficult with hand held moisture meters and this is where drone technology might come into play. If we can see and prevent moisture stress on fairways using infrared technology on a drone maybe we can also use less wetting agents on fairways.

We still used wetting agents this year. We used Dispatch on fairways and tees as we do not have the ability to have much control on these areas with our limited staff and irrigation system capabilities.

Needle tine aeration has become commonplace over the past decade.

The second part of my water success this year was less need for hand watering. Why was this? While I'm not 100% sure I have a few ideas why.

In a nutshell, I changed the soil moisture level where we would initiate irrigation. That is, instead of turning on the sprinklers when the average VWC of the soil went below 20%, we raised it slightly to 25%. This small increase in soil moisture uses no more water than maintaining a slightly lower VWC as discussed in the comment section of this blog post by Micah Woods. Check out his post for all the details on our discussion.

As you can see, in theory we can actually use less water if we keep the soil with a slightly higher VWC. Of course there is variability from one site to the other but this shows that it might not necessarily be better to have drier soils than wetter soils. It's kind of similar to how it is generally seen to be a best practice to water heavy and infrequent when that also isn't necessarily the case.

Of course you are probably thinking, what about the other impacts of soil with higher soil moisture? In the past I have found that disease is worse in areas that have more soil moisture. Maybe this is the case in extreme circumstances but this year I had more success managing disease than ever before.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to BMP in the turf industry especially surrounding water use. We all want to generalize and this leaves other who don't follow the general perceived consensus feeling like they are doing it wrong. There are many ways to skin a cat and from my experience over the past few years I have learned this first hand.

This isn't a sign of hydrophobic soils, it's simply from applying too much water too fast. The soil can only take in water as a certain rate. On slopes such as this, this phenomenon is made worse. Another reason why light and frequent is a better way to water. Less runnoff.

Deep and infrequent isn't the BMP for my course, it allows the soil to get too dry, and we have a hard time re-wetting the soil without the use of wetting agents. By watering light and frequent we can actually use less water and use no wetting agents as long as we are aware of soil moisture levels and regularly aerate our soils. It also leaves our greens more consistent than deep and infrequent watering would provide. Oh yeah, we also haven't syringed in years despite record high temperatures in the high 30's.

Dry soils are not a BMP for my course. Maintaining slightly wetter soils doesn't use more water, keeps the small and sloping greens more receptive for our clientele, and does not increase the disease or amount of pesticides that are required to keep the greens in phenomenal conditions. Maintaining slightly wetter greens also virtually eliminated the need to hand water our greens which is especially important on a small crew with limited resources.

To recap, it is my opinion that the technological advances in soil moisture monitoring, high efficiency aerators and our ability to virtually eliminate any guesswork when it comes to managing soil moisture has made the use of wetting agents redundant on highly maintained turfgrass playing surfaces. Of course, wetting agents could give you more flexibility but I think that it needs to be said that they probably aren't as essential today as they were 20 years ago.

If I was a small course operator (or big one as well) that couldn't afford a soil moisture meter, I would take what I spent on wetting agents and invest in a moisture meter, I would maintain my soil VWC at a level that required minimal hand watering and would water daily. You might find that this regime although not considered a BMP would save you water, save you labor, and save you the expense associated with wetting agent use all the while allowing you to maintain healthier and better playing putting surfaces.

Thursday, 5 January 2017

We have never spent less controlling pests on our golf course as we did in 2017. With a lot of hard work, determination, and luck with the weather and predicting the future, I was able to continue the downward trend of pesticide use on the golf course for another season. This year we spent 24% less than last year and 41% less than the last 8 year average despite the prolonged and sometimes record breaking wet weather. I used to believe that it was the wet weather that made disease management such a challenge. I am learning that it has more to do with me than the environment which is a tough pill to swallow but also fills me with optimism for future learning and improvement.

The table below outlines the total cost of pest control products used on my golf course per year. The table says greens, and yes, this is the only place that pest control products (of any kind including ISR SAR and organic) are used. I have used a bit of iron sulfate on approaches and tees for the last few years for fusarium control and this isn't included in this number. Add on $100 or so and we will call it even. Speaking of iron, at the rates I apply it I don't get adequate control so I probably won't do it in future years especially if some of the more radical things I am trying work out for disease management (no hints quite yet).

At these low levels a single application can make a big difference. To be fair, it's not uncommon to have a single pesticide application cost more than my entire annual costs so even applying a product on an extra green can have a significant impact.

So obviously there is more to consider when quantifying pesticide use aside from cost. The problem is that it is hard to assign a single number to give a good outline of that use. For me there are a few things that I consider when committing to a pesticide application on my greens.

Toxicity class: I use the World Health Organization system of classification.

When I spray I choose a product that will provide adequate control with the least toxicity.

In 2017 we applied;

3.78L of class 2 products.

8.75L of class 3 products.

Everything else was Unlikely to be hazardous as defined by the WHO. Of course these products still have impacts and concerns, but they are very minor with proper handling and application practices.

One interesting way of tracking pesticide cost is by type. Over the years we have started incorporating ISR, SAR and Organic products where they now account for almost half of my pest control costs.

I can also compare the cost of the different turf pests I have to use pesticides for. Generally I only treat for 2 pests. Dollar spot and fusarium patch. I apply phosphite year-round and I'm sure that it helps with many other pests but for the most part the only pests that cause damage on my course are these two diseases. The cool thing about these types of products is that they don't cure the disease directly and the plant is still susceptible if managed poorly. What they help me do is give me more time to react and make adjustments to the plant management practices. Of course, this isn't possible if your grass is covered in pigment...

I have worked very hard to make this kind of progress. Last year I made big gains but wasn't totally sure it wasn't because of luck. 2015 was a very dry year and this could have been why I had so much success. This year we had a very wet year and I was able to continue with my successful disease management strategy.